NYC Is About To Send Hundreds of Troubled Teachers to Struggling Schools, and Nobody is Standing up for Children

(This is a guest post by Chris Stewart that was originally published on his blog, CitizenEd. Chris is former Director of Outreach and External Affairs at Education Post.)

Over a decade ago New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and its most powerful union boss, Randi Weingarten, had a showdown over the handling of teachers who weren’t needed by the system, but who were contractually entitled to a job.

The labor-management clash resulted in a deal that allowed larger numbers of unwanted teachers to enter a man-made lake of incompetence bureaucratically labeled the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR). Sending teachers to the ATR is something like sending baseball players to minor league teams without the bats, gloves, balls, grass, plates, fans, coaches, uniforms, bleachers, training camps, or practices.

Play is optional.

Still, these sidelined teachers collect a full salary, benefits, and even earn tenure.

In 2007 then-Mayor Bloomberg’s team proposed removing teachers from payroll if they weren’t teaching again within 12 months. A year’s severance would be a great deal to most people, but the United Federation of Teachers sued. Weingarten argued that displaced teachers were victims of age discrimination and the district needed to do a better job of helping them find work.

That claim was refuted by a 2008 study done by The New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit that researched the district’s teacher placement problem. Their findings showed 25% of teachers in the ATR were newbies, and, conversely, only 19% were aging veterans.

Nearly half of the teachers had been in the ATR long enough to be considered “long-term.” Their job was not having a job, and many of them wanted no other job. (Why would they?).

Forty-six percent of these teachers failed to apply for any jobs through the city’s online employment system. Most did not attend a job fair.

Defenders of the ATR teachers demand sympathy for them and attribute their dislocation to school closings, but a deeper look at the numbers tells a different story.

Using data from the Department of Education, the education advocacy group StudentsFirst wrote in a blog post that 32 percent of ATR teachers were in the pool due to a legal or disciplinary case; 25 percent had been in the pool for six years or more; and the percentage of teachers in the ATR who were found by evaluators to be “Ineffective” or “Unsatisfactory” was 12 times that for the overall teaching force for the 2014-15 school year.

Paying unselected teachers to live in occupational purgatory may sound like a bad idea, but in the reality of education politics, it was a win for all involved.

Job satisfaction for teachers who met with principals and mutually consented to their hiring spiked.

Principals in high-needs schools could avoid taking on teachers who had no business in any classroom, let alone classrooms where struggling students need the very best instruction.

Unwanted teachers had a place to chill, out of sight, out of mind.

And, of course, the union kept dues-paying members in their stable.

More importantly, kids were spared from ineffective teachers and academic ruin.

Now the times have changed. Budget pressures are making the ATR indefensible. With an astronomical price tag of $150 million last year (and an estimated cumulative $1 billion spent over 12 years), almost no one can support wasting scarce resources on teachers who aren’t teaching, many who haven’t taught in years.

Mayor Bill De Blasio’s current administration say the logical thing to do is to empty the ATR and shoehorn up to 400 of these teachers into schools that don’t want or need them. That would be easier than locating a spine and fighting for the managerial prerogative to fire them.

When I wrote about this before I was incredulous but still naive enough to believe some political force would stop the forced placement of these teachers. In my most cynical moments, I never thought education leaders in any major school district could get away with purposely unleashing a small army of ill-equipped teachers on students who already suffer from inadequate schools and poor achievement.

I was wrong. Apparently, the usual noisemakers are taking a knee on this one. Without a billionaire to blame, or a school reform nemesis to rally against, this is a rare occurrence of outrage fatigue and activist dereliction. Social justice headquarters is filled with nothing but bystanders now.

Can you imagine what would happen if some enterprising journalist unearthed a secret memo from Eva Moskowitz to her principals informing them that they would have to hire sub-standard teachers as a cost-cutting measure?

The community organizing machine would roar with dramatic accusations of greed, self-interest, racism, and malice.

I reject the cynical, political, and corrupt muteness of people who have never been unfamiliar with microphones, cameras, and theatrics when their pockets are light but hide in the back pews when their funders threaten our children.

Where are the righteous cries for justice now?

Where is NYC’s public advocate, Letitia James, who sued the city over school buses that had no air conditioning and went after the Success Academy Charter School network for alleged bias against students with disabilities? What about Councilman Daniel Dromm and the Legal Aid Society who joined her in that fight?

Surely bad teachers are as worthy a cause as hot buses.

Where is Bertha Lewis, and her Black Institute? Where are Hazel Dukes and the NAACP; or Zakiyah Ansari and the Alliance for Quality Education; or for God’s sake, Al Sharpton?

My guess is they are succumbing to the most painful moral paralysis that union money can buy. Labor bosses have their tongues. They have lost all moral high ground in the education debate and their credibility is evaporating.

Next time they come with recriminations for school reformers let’s remind them that they forfeited when children needed them to win.

We are parents, teachers, students and community members who are strong in our belief that all children, especially those historically underserved by the traditional system, have the right to attend excellent schools.

Alina Adams is a New York City mom of 2 school-age children (and one off to college!), who happens to be a New York Times best-selling author. She’s made it her mission to help all parents find the best school for their child.

Vivett Dukes teaches public school in Queens and confronts the challenges faced by students and teachers of color, as well as exposing the school-to-prison pipeline.